CLINTON PRAISES DCFS FOR CLIMBING ADOPTION RATE

Bradley Keoun, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

President Clinton on Friday called recent efforts by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to increase adoptions as among the most successful in the nation, a laurel for an agency whose record during the past decade has been spotted by allegations of mismanaged cases in which children were killed or abused.

The presidential recognition, part of the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, also included a $6.9 million federal "adoption bonus,"--which DCFS Director Jess McDonald said would be used to reduce worker caseloads and to expand services for adoptive families.

McDonald attributed the success cited by Clinton to the agency's ability to find more relatives and foster parents willing to adopt children in state custody.

"It sounds kind of corny, but what's at the heart of all this is when these families step forward and say, `We will do this, we will become the family to these children,' " he said.

But Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, a frequent critic of DCFS, contended that the credit should go mostly to Cook County Chief Judge Donald O'Connell, who in 1996 hired four additional judges to hear adoption cases.

That, Murphy said, broke up a legal logjam and allowed 3,500 children to move into permanent homes.

The need for change was exposed in 1993 after Amanda Wallace, who had spent more than a decade in and out of mental institutions, hanged her son Joseph with an extension cord after the state gave her custody.

Friday's bonuses, awarded to 35 states and totaling $20 million, were based on the increase in adoptions each state recorded in 1998. Illinois' increase during the federal fiscal year was second only to Hawaii's, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.